News
After a historically wet season last year, relatively little precipitation has fallen this year in California during two of the three historically wettest months. Officials are urging stricter water conservation and caution drier months ahead. After last week’s rains, the Sierra snowpack — a critical factor in water availability — climbed to just 39 percent of normal. More rain is coming, but the question remains: Will it be enough to block the impacts of a resumption of the drought?
Analysis
ANALYSIS: Pew Research recently released a report titled Commercial Voter Files and the Study of U.S. Politics, which initially looked like a really interesting piece for someone like me who works in voter files every day. But one paragraph in, I nearly laughed out of my chair. The reason? There is a big difference between voter files and panels.
News
FairWarning: Despite the Trump Administration’s ardent support of coal over renewable energy, the percentage of U.S. electricity from renewable sources continued its gradual rise in 2017. Wind, solar and hydroelectric energy accounted for 16 percent of power production during President Trump’s first year in office, up from 13 percent in 2016 and nearly double the level when Barack Obama became president in 2009, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council analys
News
Scores of protesters gathered Wednesday in downtown Sacramento to denounce U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has sued California for passing laws that he said were unconstitutional and hamper the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration laws. Sessions, who announced the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit the night before, was in Sacramento Wednesday to speak before an annual gathering of the California Peace Officers Association.
News
Does Libby Schaaf have a political future outside of Oakland? Since her inauguration in 2015, Oakland Mayor Schaaf has worked assiduously on (and bragged about) programs aimed at reducing crime, improving transit and a host of other causes dear to the hearts of big-city mayors. Then came Saturday, Feb. 24.
News
Former Republican Congressman Bill Thomas, who capped a 28-year House career as chair of the Ways and Means Committee, has been out of Congress for more than a decade. His name is no longer familiar outside of his Bakersfield base. But two of his protégés are very well known – House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who served as Thomas’ district director, and Oversight Committee Chair Devin Nunes, who Thomas encouraged to run for Congress and who nurtured his career after he got there.
News
Will you (OK, your grandchildren) someday take a vacation jaunt to Mars? Or maybe move there permanently? You will if California’s 0utside-the-box-thinker Elon Musk and his competitors have their way. Non-passenger commercial space activity is already big business. Musk’s SpaceX company launches satellites into orbit, charging commercial customers $62 million per launch to as much as $20 million more for more complicated tasks, such as resupplying the International Space Station.
News
Watergate sellers started raising prices on their apartments within days of the election. A two-bedroom duplex that had been on the market for nearly a year at $325,000 was relisted at $350,000. The owner of a one-bedroom apartment put his unit up for sale five days after the election at $300,000. “That’s about $100,000 more than one-bedrooms sell for,” scoffed a real estate agent. “He’s just trying to make a killing.”
News
A relatively obscure stem cell scientist last week one-upped — sort of — one of the more powerful lawmakers in the United States Senate. It was not a direct, head-to-head contest — just sort of a rough comparison involving Democratic politics in California.
Podcast
Veteran political consultant Wayne Johnson, who has handled well over 200 campaigns in California, the U.S. and across the world, joins the Podcast this week to chat about politics and technology with Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster. Johnson, who handles mostly GOP candidates, is busy this year: He is working on Republican businessman John Cox’s gubernatorial campaign, which got a boost moments before we recorded the show when former Congressman Doug Ose abruptly exited the race.
A rain storm floats over California. (Photo: Serkan Senturk, via Shutterstock)
